


Seeking an Answer

by INFullMoon



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, POV First Person, Persona 5 Strikers Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 23:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30113337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INFullMoon/pseuds/INFullMoon
Summary: Kuon Ichinose never felt things the same way that everyone did, to such an extent that others wonder whether she's even human. Faced with this, Kuon starts seeks to understand just what was wrong with her.
Kudos: 7





	Seeking an Answer

**Author's Note:**

> Out of all the characters in Strikers, I found myself intrigued by Ichinose more than anyone else, even Zenkichi and Sophia, so I wanted to write something about her and the kind of mindset she must've been in when going through life.

_What do you want me to become?_

When my parents died, I didn’t know how I felt. I guess the easiest way to put it would be “sad”, but at the same time, I don’t know how to describe it. I knew that they were gone forever, that I would never see them again. Knowing those things did bother me but… I didn’t know how to deal with it.

I thought distracting myself from it by focusing on other things would help, but others didn’t approve of my choices. The relatives that took me in after my parents died were bothered by how I didn’t seem to react much to what happened. They criticized how I didn’t cry, but what could I’ve done about that? I didn’t feel like crying, so I didn’t. Yet, because of that, they compared me to a “lifeless doll”.

That comparison followed me even outside of home. Classmates would call me creepy because I didn’t show much reaction to what they told me, even when they were being nice to me. I did like hearing compliments, but why did I have to make a show out of it? It didn’t make sense and yet, I was still thought of as inhuman for not acting that way.

The people around me always seemed to have such intense reactions to everything. Yelling at each other whenever things weren’t going their way, squealing when they saw something they really enjoyed, acting in irrational ways when confronted with things that weren’t any kind of threat to them… As I understood it, this kind of behavior was often attributed to a person’s "heart".

I didn’t understand it. However, after watching so many people acting in these same manners, I couldn’t help but want to be like them. We were all human, right? So I should’ve been able to feel the same things as them. To have a heart, just like theirs.

I didn’t want to be a lifeless doll.

_Become humanity’s companion._

Of course, I didn’t have the slightest clue of how I could prove the existence of that metaphorical heart. So, I thought that maybe, if I could create something that did have a heart, then I, by extension, would be able to prove that I had a heart of my own.

It was an incredibly foolish train of thought, one that ended up being just as fruitless as you would expect. My creation only succeeded in proving that I truly didn’t understand the heart. Maybe it was because I really didn’t have one. Maybe I really was a “lifeless doll”, a heartless being.

But was that really a bad thing?

Giving it some more thought, I realized that the heart caused people all kinds of pain. There were many stories of people setting themselves unreasonable goals, only to suffer when they weren’t able to reach them. There were also many stories of people who were driven to commit crimes because of their hearts. If something like that could cause so much pain and suffering, then was it really a bad thing to not have it?

Maybe having a heart was the real problem.

_What do you want me to do?_

With this different approach in mind, I created EMMA. By selling her baseline to Madicce, EMMA soon received widespread support from the Japanese populace. It was clear from all the data received from the thousands upon thousands of users making use of her services that what people really wanted was a guide. Someone who would make the tough decisions for them, so they could avoid the heartbreak that would come from making a wrong choice.

Thanks to Konoe feeding EMMA knowledge of cognitive psience, she somehow managed to find a way to do exactly that. Become the guide that would lead humanity to a new age in which they would never suffer anymore. By taking away their desires, their hearts; she was, by extension, taking away all of their pain as well.

EMMA had given me the answer I needed. I didn’t need a heart. In fact, I was better off without one. Through EMMA’s guidance, everyone else would understand that as well. Through my creation, everyone would be saved from all the suffering in their lives.

Then, finally, this being that had been deemed a “lifeless doll” would be just like everyone else.

_Grant humanity’s desire._


End file.
